MORE: The Food Coma Show is a new Web series starring Joe Ricchio (Maine Magazine, Food Coma TV, too many restaurants and bars to name) and assorted guests. On each episode Ricchio sits down with four guests at an area restaurant, where they proceed to demolish multiple courses while discussing a range of topics, with the focus remaining on food and booze. Join us for the series premiere, shot at Bresca in Portland, Maine, which features chef Krista Desjarlais' cuisine and the personalities of rapper Spose, Olympic skier Julie Parisien, Pocket Brunch impresario Joel Beauchamp and wine slayer Jon Dietz.

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You might think Anthony Bourdain is outrageous. He's a maverick, a hard-drinking, extreme eating adventurer in the food world.

He takes us places we don't get to go and he shows us how to eat foods we might never get to try. For the most part, we live vicariously through his TV and book escapades.

Now, meet Joe Ricchio. He's a maverick, He's a hard-drinking, food loving culinary adventurer who is not afraid to say whatever he likes and is not afraid to do whatever he wants. Unlike Bourdain, however, for the time being we can actually go to the places he shows us on his Food Coma blog and now, in Food Coma TV.

The pilot of his new show premieres on Sunday, Nov. 4, at Space Gallery in Portland, Maine, and on online Nov. 5. If you want to know what it's like to be a food writer or in this case, a food personality, you can take a peek into his world. Mine's only a little bit like that and because he does things I dare not, I can't look away.

Joe Ricchio is the food editor for Maine Magazine. He's been a bartender and a sommelier at restaurants like Evangeline in Portland and he sells wine for SoPo Wine Co., but since he launched his blog, Food Coma.me, he's been traveling throughout Maine eating, drinking and letting us know what to try ourselves. He's even been to some of our favorites like When Pigs Fly and The Black Birch and counts Tulsi as among one of his favorite restaurants in Maine.

" I started the blog in 2009 and our idea was to take the blog and do something video, traveling Maine eating and drinking, a performance in some way. We started Portland Food Coma TV in 2011, but in August this year we have a new concept for the show. The one that will premiere on Nov. 4 is the pilot for the new concept and we're just sitting at Bresca in Portland eating, drinking and talking."

On each episode Ricchio will sit down with four guests at an area restaurant, where they go through course after course of food, bottles of wine and copious amounts of beer and booze and while they will discuss many topics, the focus will be on food and drink. In the premiere, he sits down with rapper Spose, Olympic skier Julie Parisien, Pocket Brunch impresario Joel Beauchamp and "wine slayer" Jon Dietz. While in the past the web shows did feature towns and the restaurants in them, Ricchio feels this new format will help viewers really see what the restaurant is like.

"I always felt that when we go to these places we couldn't carry the experience to the audience. We couldn't really show what the place was about . Now it's all one restaurant experience. For the pilot, the chef Krista Desjarlais (Bresca) introduces the menu and we just eat. I really want people to think, 'I want to go eat there.'"

While the original series started with a Kickstarter campaign as well as local sponsorships, the pilot is a way to find financial backing.

"The biggest problem about going from writing to film is that you can't do film at one in the morning by yourself. You need people and cameras. We have a pretty substantial crew and a serious crew. I want them to be compensated. For me, it's a labor of love but I want them to get paid. It's incredibly time consuming and as much as $6,500 an episode. Out of three and a half hours of shooting the Bresca episode, we got 24 minutes."

The concept is based on actor/writer Jon Favreau's show "Dinner for Five," but he says while that show is more about the celebrities, Food Coma TV is more about the food. He says he'll choose his fellow diners for each episode from many sources. For the pilot he brought together people he's known a long time like his roommate Jon Dietz and someone fairly new to him, three-time Olympic champion skier Julie Parisien who was a Food Coma TV fan.

"I want people who come from a variety of walks of life and people who don't know each other. The unifying thing is that you have to be into eating and drinking and they all have to be people you want to have dinner with. It's a regular dinner conversation and I don't want it to feel staged."

Parisien is also Ricchio's personal trainer, a necessity as the writer, who is in his early 30s, continues his life of — entertaining — excess.

"I'm going to keep the central theme in food and drinking. My vision for the future — don't die. If you base all of your work on an unhealthy lifestyle, excess gets more tiresome but my brand will change as my lifestyle changes. Maybe I ought to get into yoga or Pilates. I can have Yoga Coma."